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Published: June 28th 2008
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Wow we havent written in so long and we've now done so much!
As we said on the last entry, we spent some time in Puglia, starting in Vieste. This is a beach type resort on the east coast of Italy, and no one speaks English - at all! So our Italian has improved drastically! We stayed at a really cool hotel called Rocca Sul Mare, which was situated in the oldest building in Vieste. The street it was on was even named after the family who have owned the property for 400 years. It was a really laid back place and they allowed you to bring in your own food and drink, so we had a really fun night eating take away pizza and watching the Italy Euro 2008 game with the family.
We then moved onto Peschici which is just further up the coast. It was quite similar to Vieste only a bit quieter. It was hugely Italian, which meant arriving at siesta time meant that NO shops, restaurants or anything were open. Not good when its 2pm and you're starving! We spent a few days here, trying out the local pasta and oil and wine (including
a bottle for E1.59 amazingly) and really just having a nice time before moving onto more cosmopolitan parts of Italy.
We moved onto the Amalfi Coast after this, which took 5hours and 5 changes of transport, which was a bit of a nightmare! We decided to base ourselves in Salerno which isnt very touristy and so was much cheaper! It was a big city, with large pretty mundane boulevards, but also a really pretty medieval old town where we found a great gelataria doing amazing ice creams. We went to Amalfi the next day, and to get there we took a bus along the amazing coast road (considered by some to be the most stunning coastal scenery in the world). It was truly amazing - took 1.25 hours to go just 25km due to the windiness of the roads. There were coves and grottos all along, and towns clinging to cliff tops. There were also hundreds of boats - as Sam pointed out, a real playground for the rich! Amalfi was very pretty, but very much designed with tourists in mind and there wasnt a shop or restaurant not designed to attract them. We also had ice cream here,
and Sam had the most amazing strawberry flavour - we're trying to find another place with "fragola" that good, but have not yet succeeded!
We also went to Pompeii whilst in this area. In our true fashion we managed to get on a local bus that took 1.5 hours and was certainly not designed with the excavation site in mind as we were dropped off a fair way away from it, with no real way of knowing how to get there! We did eventually find it and had a look around the ancient town that was ruined by mount Vesuvius. We went there primarily to see the preserved bodies, which we did see! But there werent enough if you ask us, and not much was made of them - they were really just in a warehouse full of excavated pottery etc. The rest of Pompeii was really just ruins, which, after having done Greece for 6 weeks, did get a bit tiresome after a while!
We moved onto Sorrento from Salerno and spent a night there. Its a town very much more bustly than we thought it would be, and again, hugely toursity. But it was beautiful. We
went to a citrus grove where we bought Lemoncello (liqueur made from lemon zest, sugar, water and alcohol) which originated from Sorrento. It was nice that the one we bought was made by the people who own the citrus grove. Seemed fitting.
We have also just finished in Rome, which was a bit of a shock from the laid back-ness of Southern Italy. We also found it oppressively hot, round about 40 degrees the whole time we were there. We went to the Trevi Fountains which is a massive fountain in Baroque style. We then went to the Spanish steps, called so as they're next to the Spanish Embassy. From these you could walk up and take in the views of the city and then onto the Villa Borghese gardens which were unfortunately predominately fenced off, but lovely and shady nonetheless.
The next day we went to the Vatican. We decided to do the museums there first, and spent a good 3 hours looking around, taking in the amazing painted ceilings, many by Michealangelo and Raphael. There was also interestingly, some modern religious art, which we've never come across before. We then went through the Sistine Chapel which
was pretty amazing, especially the back wall which showed a huge painting of the last day of judgement and of course, the famous ceiling. We decided against going to St. Peter's church within the Vatican but we did see the square from which the Pope does his speeches (apparently he was there the day we went, but we missed him by a few hours!).
In the afternoon, we went over to the Pantheon which is known as one of the most well preserved Roman buildings in the world. After this, we decided that ice cream would be order of the day (again) and went to what was once known as the best place to get ice cream in Rome. It was so so nice!
The next day we went over to the Colusseum. We decided against actually going in as the outside was impressive enough, and to be honest, we've had enough of ruinous siteseeing! Instead, we decided to try and see a different side to Rome and spent the day wandering through the old town which, like many old parts of Italian towns, was a warren of streets with galleries, shops, workhouses etc lining them all. We
also tried a local thing called Frulattas which are fresh fruit, ice and milk blitzed up. It was really really good so again, we're trying to find somewhere else that will do them! The rest of the day was spent having coffee and - yet again - ice cream around the old streets of Rome.
We've moved onto Tuscany now and are in Siena. Off to a tiny hill town tomorrow then Florence after that, so will write about all of this soon!xx
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